Early life movements and mortality of Egyptian vultures: Implications for transcontinental conservation.

Understanding the movements and mortality of individuals across different life stages is crucial for the effective conservation of wild populations. We used data from 32 Egyptian vultures () tagged with GPS transmitters as nestlings in three Iberian breeding areas to study their dependence period, migration routes, movements in Africa, and mortality at each stage. Our results show no significant differences in the timing of nest departure or the duration of the dependence period between individuals of different sexes or breeding nuclei.

Burn severity and land-use legacy influence bird abundance in the Atlantic-Mediterranean biogeographic transition.

Fire regimes in mountain landscapes of southern Europe have been shifting from their baselines due to rural abandonment and fire exclusion policies. Understanding the effects of fire on biodiversity is paramount to implement adequate management. Herein, we evaluated the relative role of burn severity and heterogeneity on bird abundance in an abandoned mountain range located in the biogeographic transition between the Eurosiberian and Mediterranean region (the Natural Park 'Baixa Limia-Serra do Xurés').

Caution Is Needed When Using Niche Models to Infer Changes in Species Abundance: The Case of Two Sympatric Raptor Populations.

Despite the mounting evidence supporting positive relationships between species abundance and habitat suitability, the capacity of ecological niche models (ENMs) to capture variations in population abundance remains largely unexplored. This study focuses on sympatric populations of hen harrier () and Montagu's harrier (), surveyed in 1997 and 2017 in an upland moor area in northwestern Spain. The ENMs performed very well for both species (with area under the ROC curve and true skill statistic values of up to 0.

Monitoring protected areas from space: A multi-temporal assessment using raptors as biodiversity surrogates.

Monitoring protected areas (PAs) is essential for systematic evaluation of their effectiveness in terms of habitat protection, preservation and representativeness. This study illustrates how the use of species distribution models that combine remote sensing data and information about biodiversity surrogates can contribute to develop a systematic protocol for monitoring PAs. In particular, we assessed the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 (N2000) network, for conserving and preserving the representativeness of seven raptor species in a highly-dynamic landscape in northwest Spain between 2001 and 2014.